


The Fall

by Heather



Category: Avatar the Last Airbender - Fandom
Genre: Character of Color, Dark, F/F, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, Prison, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-11
Updated: 2009-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather





	The Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_white_rain](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=a_white_rain).



  
Azula was getting really sick of the visits.

"You know, if you want, I can bring you things when I come here." Ty Lee said tentatively. "Now that your hair's growing back, you should take better care of it. It looks so awful just hanging in your face like that."

_You shouldn't have done that. You have such beautiful hair._ Azula clenched her teeth and shook her head to clear it of her mother's voice. Her mother wasn't there. Ty Lee was. Of course, Ty Lee was annoying, but at least she was real.

"I don't care about my hair, Ty Lee." Azula muttered dryly. She cared about what plans Ty Lee had to get her _out of here._ Why the hell else did she keep coming here if she wasn't planning to get Azula out? No one else visited her, not even Mai and it was Azula's understanding that Mai was her sister-in-law now. If her own family had left her down here to forget about her, what reason but Azula's eventual escape could Ty Lee have for coming?

She certainly couldn't be here for the fond memories.

Ty Lee looked almost hurt by Azula's indifference. "You should care about it, Azula. It's the only thing you have left any more."

Azula's fingers flexed tightly, the knuckles crackling and snapping the way that lightning used to, when she could still harness its power. Zuko had put her in a cell deep underground, far from the sun, and with water flowing directly behind it, keeping the chamber just as dark and nearly as chilled as the coolers at Boiling Rock. Ty Lee had told her a few months into her imprisonment that he hadn't even gone that far in his precautions for their father. It had made her smile then. Not much did that any more.

"I have _you,_ don't I?" Azula asked.

Ty Lee smiled brightly. "Of course you do."

Azula rolled her eyes.

"I worry about you, Azula." Ty Lee said cautiously. "I don't think they treat you very well here."

Azula touched the bruise on her cheek. It was a souvenir from a recent confrontation with one of the guards. The bruise was bad enough, but it infuriated her that anyone would dare raise a hand to her, even in this place. She had been _Fire Lord_, damn it. Did they hold nothing sacred any more, in Zuzu's little dream world?

Azula opted not to share any of this, however. "I'm in prison, you moron. Of course I'm not being treated well."

"That's not what I meant." Ty Lee said. "Are they giving you enough food and water? It's just... you've gotten so skinny- not that you weren't skinny before, but I can see all your bones now. And, well, you..."

"I what,Ty Lee?" Azula asked, stepping close to the bars that separated them. She glared at her, daring her to say the words, to comment on the other ways in which Azula's hygiene had fallen apart since she'd been trapped in this cell.

Ty Lee bit her lip, but to her credit, she didn't look away. "You're kind of dirty, Azula. And you're starting to smell."

Azula glared at her hatefully. "The water they give me is for drinking, not for bathing."

"I can ask Mai to have them bring you a little more, though." Ty Lee said. "I'm sure she doesn't want you to suffer that much."

Azula snapped. "Of course she does, Ty Lee! They _all_ do. Don't you know what they say about me, up there in their palace? Or do they wait until your back is turned, to spare your little feelings?"

Ty Lee looked down at the floor.

"They laugh at me, Ty Lee." Azula said, her voice harsh and punishing, even to her own ears. "They laugh at poor little Azula, rotting underground where the big hero, Fire Lord Zuko, had the courage and strength to put her."

"That's not true." Ty Lee said. "You don't really think that, do you?"

"I know it." Azula said.

The air in the cell felt thick and heavy with tension, Azula's anger and Ty Lee's discomfort. A long silence stretched between them.

"They don't." Ty Lee said quietly. "I know they don't."

Azula smiled, as hard and bitter as underripe grapes. "And how do you know that, Ty Lee? Did you see it in their bright pink auras?"

Ty Lee dropped her gaze and mumbled guiltily, "Because Mai and Zuko were never that mean."

"Like I was." Azula finished the unspoken statement for her.

"Yes." Ty Lee admitted. "I guess so."

Azula scoffed in disbelief and disgust and stepped away from her. She walked to the back of her cell and ran her fingers along the wall. There were dozens of scratches there, the wibbles and warps in their shape matching the serrated grooves of her broken, dirty fingernails. Away from any possible view of the sun and moon, Azula marked the days that had passed based on when they brought her her meals. Each group of three represented another day she had been here.

She couldn't count them at a quick glance any more. It would probably take her an hour to find them all and reckon them up.

"Fine." Azula said at last. "Have them bring me extra water. It won't change anything."

"Not much, at first." Ty Lee agreed. "But I can start bringing soap and a comb with me when I visit. I can wash your hair for you."

Azula pondered the strategic uses of a comb. Maybe a good, solid wooden one with wide teeth could be scraped into a suitable lockpick. She had to admire the ingenuity. No one would think Ty Lee could have thought of that on her own. Mai might be suspicious- she was the only one besides Azula who knew her well enough to realize Ty Lee wasn't as guileless as she seemed- but if she became concerned enough to take it up with Zuko, he probably wouldn't believe it. He could be delightfully blind and pigheaded that way.

"All right." Azula said after a moment. "That... could work."

Ty Lee smiled. "It'll be fun. Just like... before." She finished the sentence with an almost painful awkwardness.

Before. Back when Azula had still thought that she could trust Ty Lee and Mai, before they had betrayed her to cast their lot in with Zuko.

Well. _Mai_ had cast her lot in with Zuko. Ty Lee, at least, seemed to regret that decision.

"Do you have a plan for afterwards?" Azula asked.

Ty Lee blinked. "Well, I guess I could do your nails, too--"

Azula waved that away. "There's no one to hear you, Ty Lee. You can stop acting like a little girl planning a slumber party."

Ty Lee looked wounded as she said, "I don't know what you mean."

Azula laughed. "Please. I'm supposed to believe you want to have playtime in the prison corridor?" She shook her head in amusement. "What do you plan to do, once we've opened the door?"

"...what?" Ty Lee stared at her in shock. "I'm not helping you _escape._"

...what?

"Don't be ridiculous." Azula said. "Of course you are. Why else do you come here?"

Ty Lee continued staring. " I... I missed you."

It was Azula's turn to stare. "Tell me you're joking."

"No." Ty Lee said. "I did. I really did. We were friends for a long time, Azula. It shouldn't have ended like that."

Azula exploded. "We weren't _friends,_ Ty Lee! Friends don't put you in prison!"

"I didn't do this to you, Azula!"

"Of course you did." Azula snarled, stalking back to the front of her cell to look Ty Lee in the eye. "If you and Mai hadn't betrayed me, Zuko would never have beaten me and I wouldn't be in here. This is _your_ fault!"

"No--" Ty Lee tried to say.

"_Yes._" Azula hissed. "You could have stopped her. You could have, but you didn't. You violated everything we ever had, so that she could run off with _him_!"

"Azula..." Ty Lee looked near tears.

Azula slammed both of her hands against the bars with a loud 'bang.' Ty Lee jumped like a startled cat.

"And if you're not sorry for it, what are you doing here? If you don't want to save me, then why do you keep coming here?"

Ty Lee swallowed. "Because I love you, Azula."

Azula turned away and looked at the floor so she wouldn't have to stare at Ty Lee's stupid face. "Obviously," Azula whispered, "not enough."

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Azula felt stabbing pains in her back, side and her neck. Her body went stiff, whirled and tilted. as she started to fall to the floor, she saw Ty Lee's hands reaching through the bars of the cell, now clenched into tight, angry fists.

Azula's chest felt tight with panic. Her mind reeled with memory of when they'd been here before. Azula paralyzed and falling, while Zuko got away. While Ty Lee chose Mai over her. The moment when her world really ended, her fate truly sealed. The moment she lost everything she had. The moment when she learned that maybe she had never had them to begin with.

_You should have taken better care of your friends,_ her mother's voice whispered in her mind.

Azula toppled onto the stone, helpless to do anything but stare.

Ty Lee's face was wet with tears, but her expression showed nothing but tightly controlled anguish and rage. "I know you aren't going to listen to me," Ty Lee said, "so I might as well not even try. But you were our whole world, Azula. Mai and me- we would have done anything for you. You took advantage of that, over and over again, and you never, ever said you were grateful. You didn't really care about us. You were just mean. Mai's mean to me, too, sometimes, but at least I believe her when she says I'm her friend. I don't think you ever really liked me at all.

"If it's really my fault that you're in here, then it's _your_ fault that I didn't have any reason to stay."

Azula looked up at Ty Lee. She wanted to rant and rail, and throw every condemning word back in Ty Lee's face. She wanted to tell her that soppy displays of affection were never her thing, and that if that was what Ty Lee wanted from her, then Ty Lee was an idiot who never really liked _her,_ either. She wanted tell her that Mai may _like_ her, but would never respect her, and that if nothing else, Azula had always known and acknowledged what Ty Lee was capable of. It was why she had wanted Ty Lee at her side, wasn't it?

She wanted to tell her that the world could have been _theirs_ if Ty Lee hadn't thought that Mai's "true love" was more compelling than Azula's need.

She couldn't say anything. Her face was just as paralyzed as the rest of her.

"I'm not going to come see you any more." Ty Lee murmured. "It doesn't make anything better. And it makes me feel sad, and very sorry for you."

Rage and humiliation burned like bile in Azula's throat.

"You don't deserve to be felt sorry for." Ty Lee whispered.

A vein in her head was throbbing in time with the quickening beat of her heart. She felt as if every drop of her blood was rolling and boiling. Her mind felt as if, at any second, it would shatter.

"Goodbye, Azula." Ty Lee said, then turned and walked away.

She was followed out of the prison corridor by the anguished echo of Azula screaming.


End file.
